[mehwoot]

1) The AI was just sythesizing answers given by human readers. It didn't do any of its own analysis of the data set.

2) The experiment was published in August, when the regular season was already two thirds completed. The cubs were well ahead of everybody at that point and were favourites to win (although in baseball that doesn't necessarily mean you are going to win in the postseason). Here are the standings at that Date: http://www.baseball-reference.com/games/standings.cgi?year=2...

You can see that the 10 playoff teams were ranked 1-5 in each league at that point. So predicting the playoff teams was just "Which 10 teams are leading right now", which they asked humans about.

The AI didn't predict the full post-season, just which two teams would be in the World Series, which happened to be the team everybody thought it would be from one league and the second placed team from the other.